A Royal Retrospective

Just for fun I decided to see how many royals I had hit since I started tracking such things a while back.

I went to Vegas once a year religiously from 1990-2007, losing consistently---staying at Circus Circus Manor or a New Frontier "suite" if I was lucky and primarily gambling at Slots-A-Fun and the other south strip dives. Then in 2008 I got a 3-night offer from Wynn, started bringing more cash, and I started winning, and have basically been riding a wave of good fortune (generally) going way more often and doing these trip reports, etc.

I count 10 life time royals, one in college playing....yes 4 coins! brutal. I remember it was in the dank hotel of the Lady Luck and I was doing 1-2-3-4-5 coins and getting free drinks. I believe I drank 10 Heinekein Dark's that night.... and my 4 coin royal paid $200. I remember the attendants being like "one more quarter would have made you $800". I didn't care, $200 was big money back then!

We played mostly $5 blackjack and .25 roulette with "Prez" at Slots-A-Fun in those days and ate almost nightly at the Pink Pony coffee shop in Circus Circus. We would do strip crawls playing $20 here or there. The Mirage was the "big deal" back then. Spent a lot of time in Stardust, Frontier, Riviera, etc.

My how times have changed.

Anyway with no further ado.....here are the 9 royals I've hit since!


3.7.06 Airport $1 6/5 DB $4,000---was playing quarters, changed to dollars when we decided to get pizza so i could lose it quick.



5.6.09 Wynn $1 9/6 DB $4,000---end of the night, J-Dog headed to bed with "I hope you hit a royal"...before he could get 3 steps.....



6.20.09 Casino Royale $1 9/6 DDB $4,000---The night that will live in infamy, when I met Gaggles at a Palazzo craps meet, we headed to Casino Royale and both hit royals within 40 minutes.



12.14.09 Bally's $1 9/5 DDB $4,000---The one Ace hold royal.....morning drunk at Bally's with Gaggles and Jdog in the middle of an 11-night extravaganza starting with Garth Brooks debut and ending with a 2 BR penthouse at Aria grand opening.



And this is about the time videos were beginning to be taken:

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7.3.10 Bill’s $2 8/5 DDB $8,000----Last hand of a $40 buy-in while waiting for cheap steak and eggs dinner, never ate, ended up spending 90 minutes getting an $8,000 check from Flamingo cage for the Bill’s Royal.



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8.25.11 Bally’s $1 8/5 DDB $4,000—First night of another lengthy full crew summer trip, nothing better than seeing those sweet diamonds appear with the whole crew gathered at Bally’s for our opening salvo.



11.5.13 Horseshoe Hammond $1 8/6 BDlx Progressive $4,381—In preparation for our first official regulation strip crawl, Helio and I made a buffet coupon lunch run to Hammond and I nailed this bitch after a real long extended royal-less dry spell. Funniest part was while awaiting the handpay, they let you keep playing, I hit two more $400 quads and built the non-royal balance to $1,000. Took the handpay and went to the buffet, was counting my money and felt something amiss, ran back realizing I hadn’t cashed out the $1,000 and it was still in the machine!!! Whew….



5.28.15 Aria $1 Triple Play Double STP 8/6 BDlx $4,000---After having squandered a $2,500 night one profit, going down $1,500, it was suggested we try Aria, where a decent run of quads got me just near even before the stack blew with this one:



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5.29.15 Mirage $1 9/5 DDB $4,000---Just starting out the gaming night with our first few drinks as we planned to meet up with Packer and crew, we had some time to burn as they dined at Cut, stopped on the way to Palazzo/Wynn area at Mirage, and well….they had peach ciroc, borat found the shitters handy after Caesars buffet….. and the machines were quite nice!:

 

You really need to teach me how to play vp during a trip, and those runzas i ordered better be good!!!! Lol

 

lol he can set up a booth in the Bally's Bazaar Market! Everything about Royals you wanted to know but were afraid to ask lol

 

I can't vouch for the quality of Runza's those whoreish unemployed librarians are producing these days.....unless they are ex-Red Lobster hostesses, then I can guarantee a quality experience!

As for the VP----if it is replacing Slot play, I'd recommend it as a better alternative, but if its replacing craps or blackjack, I'd say its better to avoid getting started down smoking this particular crack pipe....note the points where i went YEARS without a royal. Lol. Of course if a guy switches to Bonus Deluxe and hits enough quads, and presses at just the right time, he can still make money on shitty paytables without royals somehow.

In all seriousness, I do think VP is a good game in extreme moderation......play for 1/2 hour grab some easy drinks at the bar.....the really nice thing is it is very easy to play for lower stakes---of course some people are never able to do that.. Ahem.

 

But the thing is....I really am afraid to ask like you said

 

Funny guy lol

 

Bronco, listen to beejay. It's crack. I even found the sign in New Orleans to prove it.

 

Lol, i hope i do not learn vp now. Thnx bayou lol.

 

Step up to BeeeJayy the Magnificant's VP booth lol He's always talking about Carny bets!

seriously , I need to learn VP , never have figured out how they work!
same with Craps, would love to try to roll them Craps dice one night!

 

It's so crazy how some people have never hit a royal in their lifetimes, yet you have been able to hit multiples in one trip. The VP machines love you man, just like all the women in Nebraska!

 

It would make 2 of us trying to learn vp and craps vegasdiva

 

The gf hit her 4th this past trip to my single royal. But on craps, I'm the one that goes on the insane runs that she misses out on. Just to spite her I told her I'd hit my next royal on dollars. But can my bankroll handle the variance until I hit it. Haha

 

haha.....actually the person who can never lower the VP stakes is me, sadly, as it is a big tradition for me to "plan" to play quarters or 50 cent, but I always end up playing $2. and its kind of unfortunate that I got my last 3 royals on $1 because I've probably played 75% $2 stakes over the past few years. At least I had no choice, as in all 3 cases the machines I hit royals on only went up to $1.

And this can work in my favor as most of the time I spend playing $1 I'm either forced to due to the machine or I trick myself into low-rolling to "tempt fate" by pissing myself off with the non-$2 royal. OK, lets be honest, I don't think there was a single time in this trip where the machine had $2 that I played $1.

But hey at least I only played like $100 worth of $5 for a change! On a 4-nighter I could easily blow back in all the winnings chasing that elusive $20,000 royal!

 

I imagine the casino manager at Casino Royale sitting at his desk sipping a glass of generic bourbon neat when all of a sudden a red light starts blinking on his desk and the phone rings...it's the shift manager calling to say someone has just hit for $4k. He then sobs uncontrollably into his glass...

You've had a helluva run! I don't play VP but I'm going to take a couple shots at it. But I do need to get on a craps table with you and the hard ways crew!

 

yeah that is the whole thing with VP, you gotta have the bankroll to match your choice of game. I've found on DDB its easy to have a bad night and lose half a royal. So that would be $4,000 playing $2. I try to go with a $2,500/day bankroll so if I were to play all out DDB VP I would have to stick to $1.

What ends up happening is I play $2 Boner Deluxe, which has a much lower variance. And I don't play "all out VP" because I'm spending so much time on Craps with a little roulette, 3-card and some occasional BJ mixed in. The Boner Deluxe variance advantage was evidenced on this trip, all those $2 Quads paying $800 instead of $500 really adds up! In fact the only "premium" quad I hit was 4's at wynn and was playing DDB. It sure the fuck does sting when you hit the Aces Kicker on $5 Boner Deluxe like I did at Flamingo on our November 2013 strip crawl---that's an $8,000 punch in the nuts!

Also except for the first day and the last day, Borat and I don't normally play until after the pool, so we are getting a lot less play in than people doing a 5-hour morning VP session.

 

Yeah there are a lot of trainers for VP. I think all of us in my crew who play much VP, spend a lot of time on the trainers. I'm about 99% on 8/5 bonus deluxe, much worse on DDB. It makes a big difference though knowing the correct holds. You can see on some of the trainers mistakes can cost you $100's per hour. But even with proper strategy its still a fuck more often than not. I mean I've got 10 lifetime royals, and 2 this trip so that means I had 8 in the 24 years of gambling before that. Hmmmm. Lol. 1 every 3 years and that royal accounts for a lot of the difference between slots and VP payback....with these crappy paytables and some mistakes VP can easily become a low 90's % payback game. (then again that's about where the craps hardways are too )

 

Sounds like we play almost exactly the same,I'm just at a slightly lower level. DDB was eating my lunch right off the bat. Had to switch to Bonus poker where of course I hit 4 aces. Half a royal is a nice rule of thumb I like it. That should get a decent amount of play. Craps and 3 card is where I made my money this past trip. GF made it on her royal and also hitting trips and a straight flush on 3CP, the bonus payouts were nice.

 

LOL at that "video crack" sign...so true!!

I'm green with envy with all those royals!

I'm still waiting on even a nickel or a quarter royal, let alone dollars!

On that Mirage royal, was that at the Sportsbook bar? Alexanbo said you couldn't play higher than dollars in the TR. The Lobby Bar had 9/6 DDB at the $2 level last year...

 

Fun thread. Love the video of getting the handpay! Also got a kick out of the story of leaving $1,000 credits in the one machine.

I've got two, both on nickels. Still a hell of a lot of fun to hit!

 

Nice post!

I was a Lady Luck low roller as well (I still am at heart...)
I loved the rolling drink carts. If you asked for a beer and a shot they'd make you shoot the shot before giving you the beer.
"One drink at a time sir." Until you gave them $5!

I don't remember the end of a single evening I spent there.